Do you know what is this? I though that almost everyone knows that it's a "spy glass" 😎 But while chatting with many of you about the process of dough handling I understood that this small glass is very often something unknown.
So I decided to write about it, because this is the thing that helped me to understand how much to proof the dough and how to get an open and tender crumb👌 So it should be known by every baker!
I saw this spy glass long ago on Lera's page @hleb_sama, she called it a spy glass (in Russian "стаканчик-шпион") and it really helped me to start feeling the dough. Because when I started baking bread, my problem for a very long time was that my dough was always under-proofed. So thank you, Lera, so much for such a discovery🙏😀!
How does this spy glass work:
📎 after a final mixing of the dough (when it already has starter and salt) we take a small piece of it and put into this glass, we mark the top level of the dough and cover the glass with something (I use a piece of plastic or foil). Then we leave this small piece of dough to proof in a spy glass, it should always stand right next to the main dough, at the same temperature🌡
📎The glass should be strait and narrow. I know that Lera @hleb_sama has her specially designed spy glasses with marks on them to see the growth in %. I use a regular tequila shot glass, it works perfectly for such dough growth monitoring! This glass will clearly show us how our dough grows: it already has a 30% rise, a 50% rise, 60%, 90%, 120% etc.
📎You can also make some marks on the glass, I usually measure by eye. When the glass is strait and narrow it's easier to see this growth, rather than in a big bowl with the whole amount of dough. It's especially important for those bakers who has just started working with bread dough.
📎This spy glass almost never lies, it really helped me to stop being afraid to overproof the dough. When you can easily see the level of growth, you will not start shaping the dough when it's too early. And as I've already said it was my problem at first, the bread was dense, the crumb was not so open, more sour, less tender.
📎And for sure this spy glass is like an alarm that says it's just the right time to start shaping the dough. I don't rely on time ⏰ parameter any more when I deal with bread dough proofing: flours are different, some of them work faster, some slower. The starter today can be more active or less active, the temperature in the kitchen can vary. So every dough needs different timing to be proofed nicely. And the only thing that really helps me to see the real growth rate is this small glass.
I'm glad that I've already helped many people with the advice to start using this spy glass method and it always worked great. All my friends are thankful because their bread now appears to be tastier and more tender, they started to understand bread dough better.
I highly recommend everyone to try this spy glass. If it's the first time you read about such a method, believe me, it will magically improve your dough and bread🙌. In the next post I'll continue this topic, will write about till which level I prefer to proof the dough and what factors influence it. Read the next post.
Have you already used this spy glass, do you like it? It will be interesting to know about your experience😉